Mongolian_Great_Bustard_Project_Summary_Jan_2012

Chick-rearing greenhouse at Buckow

Five members of the LIFE+ project team visited Germany last week, as guests of the Brandenburg Great Bustard Project. The main aim of the trip was to investigate German methods for incubating, rearing and releasing great bustards, to support our plan to import eggs to the UK for the first time this spring.

We spent a day at the rearing station at Buckow, 50 miles west of Berlin, and saw every stage of the rearing process up to the point when the chicks are moved to their final release site. The next day at Fiener Bruch, one of three areas in the region with special protection for great bustards, we visited one of the release enclosures.

The population of great bustards in Germany was precariously close to extinction in the mid-1990s – only 57 individuals remained in 1997. Thanks to the rear and release programme, allied with habitat enhancement and protection from predators, that number has now risen to around 120.

Eggs are collected from nests considered to be doomed. In practice this means any nest outside special fenced areas, as the area suffers from high numbers of predators. Problems are caused not only by foxes, but also by introduced raccoons and raccoon dogs. The raven population is also much higher than in the UK.

Once brought to the field station, eggs are incubated according to precisely determined temperature and humidity levels. The hatched chicks are moved to a box with a heat lamp, then to a heated greenhouse. As they get older, they spend more and more time outside, but always have access to shelter until they are moved to their release site at about two months old.

Watching bustards at Fiener Bruch

The rearing process is extremely hands-on – project staff wear surgical scrubs with which the birds become familiar, and take them on walks through the surrounding fields, showing them plants and insects they can eat. Once at the release site, they initially spend the night in a netted pen, being led out during the day to feed, but as they get wilder the human contact is reduced and then removed.

At Fiener Bruch, the success of the project was in the numbers – 17 of 21 birds released in 2011 are still alive, thanks in part to the extremely mild winter.

Despite the cold, wet weather that persisted throughout the trip, we saw bustards both at the main project site and at Fiener Bruch. In the same area hen harriers could be seen everywhere, and there was an impressive crane roost thought to number 5000 birds. As in Austria, it seems that conservation measures motivated by great bustards support many other species. We talked to local farmers and hunters, and learned a lot from Torsten Langgemach and his team at Buckow. Their project website (in German) is www.grosstrappe.de.

Help for English bustard protection: British scientists want to benefit from the experience of the state bird observatory in Buckow

Sometimes it’s good when visitors come from far away. The five Englishmen, staying on the farm of Willi Kathe in Gräningen are certainly very happy with their visit, and breakfast is just as rich and tasty. They tasted wheat beer the night before and have seen on the fields around Buckow over 1000 cranes.

1000 cranes – a number almost inconceivable for the British: in Great Britain there was a sensation when, in the summer of 2011, a group of 20 birds could be seen. As a breeding bird the crane became extinct on the island in the 17th Century.

The great bustard endured a bit longer – at least until the early 19th Century. The bustard areas in Brandenburg and Saxony-Anhalt are the real reason for the visit of the group. The five scientists from the Great Bustard Project work for the Great Bustard Group and the RSPB, the world’s largest bird protection membership organization. Together they are trying to bring the great bustard back in the vicinity of the famous stone circle of Stonehenge in southern England. During their visit they want to benefit from the experience of the bustard protectors in Brandenburg.

“The Great Bustard belongs to the national cultural heritage in our project area,” said David Waters, chairman of the Great Bustard Group. The bustard features in the old coat of arms and place names. The enthusiasm in the local population for the reintroduction project is huge, says Waters. Among others there was a small brewery, which sells a very successful bustard beer, and local artists create the big birds on canvas.

In 2004, the first bustards were released in England. The young birds are from southern Russia, where there are about 8,000 birds with a very large and stable population. “The two-day trip from Russia means considerable stress for the young birds brought from our project area,” says Waters. In order not to weaken the bustards unnecessarily, the biologists want to incubate and hatch the bustard eggs in England.

In order to support the existence of the last free-living great bustards in Germany, this method has also been practiced by the state bird observatory in Buckow for a long time. The Englishmen now want to learn from local experiences.

“The Thursday was therefore devoted to theory,” says Torsten Langgemach, head of the state bird observatory. When the temperature and humidity in the incubator do not exactly match that required, fewer bustard chicks hatch. After the long journey the group theory classes were important so that they could on Thursday afternoon and Friday to go on field trips. Rainy weather? No matter, because Englishmen are ultimately used to it. In Fiener Bruch they could only see a couple of bustards, and then they looked around the site as they needed to do. They met with hunters and farmers and also inspected a fox proof fence, behind which the bustards are safe from their pradators. It was certainly not the last experience of this kind, as at the moment around twelve great bustards live in the English project area. Until a stable population size is reached, it is probable that many bustard eggs there will be hatched in an incubator.

At the same time, the Havelländers can learn something from the British bustard protectors. On the project website (www.greatbustard.org), there is a link to a very professional shop with bustard articles. The number of matching t-shirts, coffee mugs and stuffed animals exceeds the number of bustards by far. A good way to make extra money for the bustard project.

Follow this link to see the board in detail.

Please note that orders for fish/sausage and chips will need to be placed beforehand by emailing hannah.rose@greatbustard.org

We would encourage everyone to bring drinks.

Boomer at its 50 hour service, 11th January 2012

The New Holland Boomer tractor, kindly loaned to the project by C&O Tractors, has just finished its first fifty hours work at the release site. It was delivered to us in August, and has since been used by GBG volunteer Allan Goddard to make preparations for great bustard habitat creation in 2012. Today Allan is ploughing one of our fallow strips, which will then be allowed to naturally regenerate through the spring. Bustards will feed in the strip, both on the leaves of weeds and on the insects attracted by the weeds. It could also tempt our breeding pair of stone-curlew when they return in March.

A bustard in the Dévaványa release pen

Hungary is estimated to hold 3% of the world’s great bustards; however, over the last century, a switch to more intensive farming practices, winter food shortages and fragmentation of bustard habitats led to their decline here. Since the 1990s, the population has increased through conservation by the Túzokvédelmi Program (Bustard Protection Program) as well as changes in land-use. In November I visited the Dévaványa Landscape Protection Area (Tájvédelmi Körzet) within the Körös-Maros National Park with Dr. Zsolt Végvári from the University of Debrecen. The Dévaványa Landscape Protection Area was established in 1975 to safeguard Hungary’s largest population of great bustards.

At the project site we met park rangers Tibor Lengyel, László Puskás, and Gábor Czifrák, who showed us around their chick rearing facilities, 6-hectare pen for injured birds and huge 400-hectare release pen. The larger pen is used to release chicks reared at the rescue centre and also supports up to 40 displaying males and 50 females in the spring. Before the release pen was established, this area was intensively managed arable land and only one nesting female was found annually. Since then, the numbers of nesting females has increased, with 14 families observed in 2011. The pen is managed to contain a mosaic of only four arable habitats; 220 hectares is grassland, with the remaining 180 hectares managed as wheat, lucerne, oil seed rape and fallow areas. Around the pen there are tall observation towers, allowing staff to monitor birds inside and around the pen.

The project workers provide information to farmers across the 13,000 hectare Körös-Maros National Park on how to protect females and their nests by modifying their farming practices. However, this is not always possible and around 35 endangered eggs are recovered by the project staff each year from nest sites up to 50 kilometres away.

These eggs are incubated at the rescue station and once hatched, chicks are given individually numbered leg rings and kept inside a small heated area until they are three weeks old. They are then transferred to a larger, outdoor rearing pen which is sown with lucerne and given a variety of food including cooked potato, beef heart, egg, cottage cheese, ground maize and linseed. While in this rearing pen, the chicks have access to a small roosting shed and are walked for up to 2 hours in a long fenced outdoor corridor.

When the chicks are 6-8 weeks old and are ready to fly, they are fitted with individually numbered wing-tags or leg-rings and released into an introductory area at the centre of the 400-hectare release pen. This is a small mosaic of all the habitat types in the pen, bordered by a natural fence of sunflower or maize strips. Released birds can stay around this introductory area for up to two months before exploring more widely in the pen or leaving the release pen entirely and joining up with wild birds outside. Newly-released birds prefer to feed on lucerne before switching to oil seed rape, and will move to grassland areas during sunny weather, where there is a greater abundance and diversity of insects to feed on.

Despite my limited time at the Dévaványa Landscape Protection Area, it was a thoroughly interesting trip and made especially enjoyable by the informative and enthusiastic rangers. I hope the information gathered during this trip, together with strengthening links with great bustard conservation managers and scientists in Hungary, may help to generate new ideas for conservation of this enigmatic species.

Kate Ashbrook, LIFE+ Monitoring Officer

You can read the full newsletter by clicking the link below:

The_Gompou_Volume_9

The releases from the new site in Wiltshire still seem to have done significantly better than the ones released on Salisbury Plain. A review of the numbers will be prepared in the spring as there are several birds whose whereabouts are unknown to us at the moment, but who will probably turn up in the next month or so.

After a bit of a flurry of press activity we had the usual spike in Bustard sightings. We are always grateful to anyone who makes a report in good faith, but they all need to be screened before sending one of our team out. The obvious ones to avoid are Bustards standing on posts, sitting in trees or even one one occasion swimming across a lake!* The most common none Bustard species are pheasants, Guinea Fowl, the odd turkey and even chickens. Whilst some of these are a bit frustrating, and a few amusing, we do appreciate all the reports made.

At the main project site on Salisbury Plain P5 (from 2007) is the largest male about. He is already starting to grow his whiskers and his neck is beginning to redden up as he grows his spring plumage. A large male from 2010 (Pink tags) is also around the site and usually with his older rival. It will be very interesting to see at what point the bigger bird ceases to tolerate the company of the younger bird. This will tell us the hormones are building up for the display.

We have had several reasonable size groups of birds around, with 8 being reported together a few miles from the new site, and often up to 7 at the Salisbury Plain site. Despite our best efforts many of the birds spend this time of the year in ones or twos or as individuals. They are likely to join up again in the spring. One of the birds from the first release (2004 – Orange tags) has taken some of this years birds under her wing and is rarely seen without them. I am sure this is a help for the youngsters to learn the techniques of survival.

On other topics we are all indebted to Charles Hibberd a GBG volunteer who has helped install a wind turbine at our site. This turbine was given to us by the RSPB, but was in a state of dismantled disrepair and without any instructions or handbook. It needed a great deal of thought and consideration to get it all up and running. This will help us greatly at out mobile home office which is not connected to mains electricty.

*Great Bustards lack hind claws, preventing them from perching.

Since we launched our Eggs and Chicks appeal in November, press coverage has been steadily increasing.

GBG Director David Waters spoke on BBC Radio Wiltshire this morning about the new initative and its importance to the project.

You can read the BBC news story here: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-wiltshire-16242147

You can donate to the appeal by visiting http://greatbustard.org/appeal